A Perfect Moment
by Le1a Naberr1e
Summary: Padme's PoV of the Meadow Scene


**A PERFECT MOMENT [i]**

The yellow sun is warm on my bare shoulders. I can hear the wind whistling through the grass and I feel it lifting my skirts around my ankles. I close my eyes and when I inhale, it is the sweet scent of saltwater spray and meadow. 

At your insistence, I open my eyes and I take the slice of fruit that you offer to me. Our eyes meet as I sink my teeth into it and for once, I am not the first to look away. I hold your gaze and watch the play of emotions in your expressive blue eyes and I giggle softly when you finally look away with reddened cheeks.

It is so delightful to be here like this in the middle of our little picnic in the meadow. If I have ever had a moment like this, when my only cares were which outfit would be practical for lying in the grass and whether I packed enough liquids in the picnic basket then it was so long ago that I do not remember. I idly watch a herd of raks parade in the far distance and I feel your gaze return to me. It has become like a game, our wandering eyes. There are even certain rules. First one of us stares until the other is compelled to look back and our gazes are locked for heartbeats. The one that breaks the stare is the one that has to initiate it moments later. All this goes on while we make idle conversation about everything and anything. Right now, we are talking about the years we have spent apart. I ask about your training as a Jedi. I hear the earnestness in your voice as you answer me, not even trying to contain your delight at my apparently idle interest in your life. But it is not idle, even though it should be and both of us are aware of it. Your life as a Jedi seems to be dominated by your tumultuous relationship with Master Kenobi and your dangerous adventures. I wonder if all your Jedi missions are really so wild or whether you selected the ones that were most likely to impress me. I remember you as a boy showing me your protocol droid and insisting that you were yet to show me the fastest-ever Podracer you were building outside. You have never needed to brag to impress me, Ani. I have always known you are special.

The conversation turns back to me and once again, I find myself confiding in you more than I have ever with anyone before, certainly more than I have planned to or more than I think prudent. I talk about my brief hiatus between Queen and Senator and the melancholy that had almost overwhelmed until Queen Jamilla re-instituted me in her service. I talk about my years as an Apprentice Legislator and my adventures in academia and the military. The memories of that time are so bittersweet. I was young then, although I did not know it. I believed in the sanctity of the law and our government of democracy. Those days were filled with hard work, rigorous training and intensive study but they were also filled with cheerful companionship, high-spirited yet _good_-spirited debates and most importantly, passionate idealism. I believed in a system that I have long come to accept as corrupt. My life now is filled with political alliances, cut-throat senate debates and cynicism.

But I have no intention of letting my thoughts dwell even temporarily on my life in politics or lack of it. I want them to dwell on you. Your attentiveness to my words is highlighted in your every expression, your features mimicking the mood of the points in my narration. It is like looking into a mirror with a different reflection, that is how closely you empathise with me.

Our conversation turns to the more personal and I am asking you about your romantic life. Part of my mind tells me that I am going into perilous territory. Frequently of late, that part of my mind has been giving me a lot of well-needed and unwanted advice. This time around, I choose not to heed.

I am enchanted by the endearing mixture of embarrassment and earnestness with which you narrate a story of emotional celibacy. I refuse to even ask myself why I am so elated by your answer. Then you are turning the question back at me and I hedge because I want to tease you. I still remember Palo, as clearly as any girl would remember her first crush, her first kiss - his wonderful hair and eyes. I tell you this and watch your face darken with anger and hurt and I am delighted. That annoying part of my mind tells me this time that I am playing with fire and now, the other part, a part which has generally lain silent and docile all these years, rises up and tells it to leave me be. It is the part that I think might be my heart.

The conversation moves out of the intimate and into queries about my career. Are you merely taunting me, I wonder, when you speak of your antipathy to politicians and our system of rule? You, more than anyone I know personally, would have cause to be disillusioned by the Republic. I can never forget your mother's words to me:_ the Republic does not exist here_ and the realization that there were people in this free system of democracy who were literally slaves. I can never forget the disappointment in your earnest face when Qui-Gon told you we had not come to Tatooine to free the slaves. I remember that as a child you dreamt of being a Jedi and freeing the other slaves. Do you still have those dreams, Ani or have you become complacent with cynicism? Your heart must ache so with thoughts of your mother. I want to help you, Ani. I want to ease your burden for you.

You are laughing at me now, teasing me about my position. Your words are like needle pricks in the already dwindling balloon of contentment inside me. I manage a small smile and look away. I do not wish to be reminded about the protocols of Senator Amidala, Ani. They do not include lying shoeless in the grass and flirting with an adolescent Jedi Padawan. I do not wish to be Amidala today. I was Amidala yesterday. Yesterday, when you kissed me and your breath seemed to draw out the soul from my body, I could feel everything I ever stood for and believed in, fall away from me and leave behind a person that I did not know. It was that fear that made me pull away in fear. Perhaps, that person was Padmé, just Padmé, the woman I might have grown up to be if I had never been Amidala and had my illusions corrupted so early. 

You seem to sense my disquiet. I watch you chase after a shaak that has fallen behind from the herd. Your antics are amusing and I laugh, my worries of Amidala pushed aside.

Today, I want to be just Padmé with you. Young and carefree, with every right to lie in the grass and feel beautiful and wonderful under the worshipful gaze of a young suitor.

For that is what you are, Ani. Do you think I do not know you, what you want from me, what your attentiveness and charisma and impish charm are driving at? 

Or is it Padmé whom I do not know? Because while you have made yours common knowledge with every word and gesture from the first moment of our meeting, my own feelings are hidden from myself. 

Last night I struggled with sleep that was haunted by dreams of that kiss. 

I have to convince myself that that was all that that kiss was. A dream.

Get up, Ani. You are taking this joke too far and I am no longer amused. As if in response to my thoughts, you groan softly and your body heaves from the ground. Then it collapses under its own weight.

Ani.

The wind between my skirts tells me that I am running but my mind doubts that. Everything seems to be either slowing down or moving against me: the blades bend leisurely before they part before my feet; your still figure draws away even as I reach for it. Like a zooming holo-vid, my vision shrinks until my focus is purely on you. My ears cannot make out any sound because none is coming from you.

_Ani._

I have but known you for a few days in a span of ten years but now I think and I cannot remember a time in my life when I was without the knowledge of a blue-eyed boy who thought that I was an angel. My mind moves to the opposite possibility - that there would be a time in my life when that blue-eyed boy would be no more - and it recoils from it.

If my heart is pounding, I cannot feel it and if my breath is heaving, I cannot hear it. Fear is cold in my chest and I feel the numbness spreading through my body. I fall on my knees beside you; my eyes note the utter stillness of your body. For the first time since our reunion, my hands reach out to touch you of my mind's accord. Your body is limp as I turn it on its back. I wait for the part of my mind that would tell me that I am overreacting.

It is silent.

_Oh!_

I am furious! I can feel my chest heaving inside me now; my heart is literally pounding with anger. I strike at you and I am even more furious because it only serves to amuse you. I strike harder, repeated blows all over your face and body until your arms trap mine and we are rolling in the grass. Your chest is heaving against mine and I can hear the sound of your laughter and feel the breath of it in my ear. It is not funny, Ani. It is not even remotely funny. But happiness is bubbling between my ribs and I throw back my head and join you in laughter. We are still rolling in the grass and it should be awkward but all I feel is light and weightless and happy because you are Ani and even though you were heartless, you are alive and in my arms and I am in love with you.

I win our scuffle. You throw your head back in defeat and your dear, _dear_ face is wreathed with grins. I laugh down at you with sheer delight at my discovery. I do not know when the emotion first took root in my heart and started to grow. Perhaps, it was planted there ten years ago when I promised you I will always care for you. Perhaps, it was planted even earlier, when you asked me at the moment of our first meeting. I do know that it has been growing greedily within me ever since our reunion, consuming me with a pain that my mind has been unwilling to understand. It is the discovery of the emotion and not the emotion itself that gives me joy.

I love you.

Later, this awareness will cease to be a cause for elation. Later, I will sit down and my pragmatic mind will analyze it clinically: an outlandish assumption, a ludicrous conclusion based on a moment of anxiety and spontaneity. But for now, I _know_ with both my heart _and my mind. And I celebrate this gift of love with every fibre of my being._

We lie on the grass now, side by side. My arm has flung itself over your chest and you hold my hand to your heart with your own. My breathing is in pattern with your heart's beating. You are silent, for once, and I am glad. I do not wish to talk, to discuss, to argue and spoil this perfect moment with awkwardness, denials and misgivings. They will come in time and they will come in plenty. For now, I only want to give my soul freedom to be tied by this strange bond that connects us so intimately, formed ten years ago when we were both children and now forged and strengthened into something that transcends reality.

The yellow sun kisses us with its warmth. The wind caresses us with a cool breeze. The distant waterfall blesses us with the sweet scent of saltwater spray and meadow. 

I will remember this day for the rest of my life.

**THE END**

  


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[i] Author's note: Thanks to my beta, [b]Dally[/b] for making this Perfect! Not exactly a _missing moment._ Straight off the top of my head. (Wrote it longhand on the bus home, as a matter of fact!) Padmé's PoV during the Meadow Scene. Inspired by the Stolen Moments Thread by **Darth_Tim** and **Marawannabe**, a delightful collection of vignettes based on the love story in AotC.


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